I had two people tell me this week that they were taking a day to pack for a vacation. I mean, they were only going away for a long weekend, or maybe even a week. And they spent the entire day packing. They probably spent some time prior to this planning the trip as well.

Why is it that we’ll easily spend several hours (and sometimes even days or weeks) planning for a vacation or for a wedding, yet when the word planning is mentioned in business, business owners usually have an extremely adverse reaction? “I don’t have time to plan,” they often say. We ask, “How can you not take the time to plan?”

Why is planning such a bad word in business? Why don’t business owners spend more time, and in some cases any time, planning to make a profit in their business?

Instead of sitting back and mapping out a plan of attack, many business owners just run around and shoot from the hip when it comes to making decisions in their business. Constantly creating and putting out fires.

The #1 problem we see with small business is the lack of creating and then executing a plan. More specifically, a Profit Plan (you may have heard it called a Budget or a Forecast).

If we use a conversion ratio of say 1 day of planning for each 1 week of vacation, then each business owner should spend the equivalent of a day a week planning. How many business owners do you know who spend less than a day all year planning their business, let alone a day a week?

We’re trying our best to help with this through our business coaching where we spend 1-2 hours each week with most of our clients and then they work for another couple of hours each week on things in their business. These “things” they’re working on tend to be more strategic in nature instead of tactical.

Do you know any generals who would agree to go to battle without having adequate time to prepare a plan of attack as well as some back up plans for when things go wrong (because they always do)? How about football coaches? Why do think they work 100+ hour weeks during the season?

So don’t let planning be a dirty little word in your business. There is nothing more important to your company’s survival than the creation and execution of a Profit Plan.

One of the most common question we get from both our business coaching clients as well as from business owners we meet is, “how do I find good people?”

Ever tried volunteering for a community or non-profit group? Whether you’re someone looking for good people or you are a good person looking for work, one of the most overlooked recruiting tools is volunteering.

Find something that interests you and get involved. Some examples might be:

1. Service Clubs: these include clubs like Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions where people get together to improve both their local communities as well as those around the world.
2. Business Groups: think of groups like Chambers of Commerce or even some local economic development groups.
3. School Related: whether you have school-aged kids or not, getting involved with School Boards, PTA groups, or non-profits like Junior Achievement.
4. Faith Based Groups: if you are a member of a faith-based community, chances are there are opportunities to get involved in some of their projects.
5. Other Civic and/or Community Activities: look around your local community to see what is going on and start to get involved. Perhaps there’s a local park or nature center that needs some help or a soccer or baseball team that needs a coach.

Don’t join too many groups at once. Start with the one that has the greatest interest for you personally, that way you’ll be motivated to get involved and make a difference.

The key with these group(s) is to get involved in the group as quickly as you can (preferably at the leadership level). Here are some quick ways to jump start your involvement:

1. Go to all the events and meetings.
2. Get introduced to all the leaders in the organization.
3. Spend some 1-on-1 time with some of the longer-term members as well as some of the newer people outside the scheduled events. This 1-on-1 time is a great way to get to know more about that particular person as well as find out more about how the group works.

A couple of guiding principles to keep in mind when finding good people, whether in a volunteer situation or not:

1. Get introduced: it’s always better to get introduced by someone you know vs. finding someone in a classified ad or through a posting in an online forum. The trusted source who introduces you can provide real insights into the person’s strengths and weaknesses that you won’t find elsewhere.
2. Test drive before you buy: we always encourage our clients to take new people for a test drive before making them a permanent part of the organization. It’s similar to the process of finding a partner in your personal life. Short of being on a reality show like The Bachelor, most folks aren’t making a decision to marry someone based on a couple of interviews and meals alone.

Volunteering gives you the chance to show people how you do things. It also gives you a chance to see how others perform.
Chances are if someone is negative in their volunteer activities, they’ll be negative in the work place as well. If someone makes a positive impact very quickly in the volunteer group, they’re likely to make a similar positive impact with any organization they are part of.

If people overpromise and underdeliver in their volunteering, they’ll probably do the same in their business life. I think you get the idea. So get out there and get involved! You never know what or who you might find!

About one-third of our business coaching clients have involved situations where there are multiple owners in the business. This has included spouses, siblings, parents & kids, in-laws, friends, and business acquaintances.

One of the biggest struggles with multiple owners is getting all the owners on the same page. When the business is first formed, everyone is usually on the same page. But as the months and years go by, it’s easy to drift apart.

Here are a couple of keys for better communication with your business partner:

1. Understand Behavior Styles: one of the things we do for all of our clients is to take them through a behavioral assessment from Extended DISC. It’s amazing how something so simple as understanding your own behavioral style (and eventually the styles of other people) can help you to communicate better. In fact, our experience has shown that most of the problems that occur within an organization could have been avoided if everyone understood people’s styles better. Let’s say you’re not that detail oriented, but your partner is. If the two of you don’t adjust your natural styles when communicating with each other, there will be friction sooner vs. later. In times of stress, your natural behavioral styles become more important because your tendency will be to overemphasize your natural style.
2. Keep The Appointments: for some reason, meetings have gotten a bad rap. Usually it’s because the meetings are not focused, not interactive, and not kept on schedule and on task. There’s a reason why nearly every football team huddles between plays, so why should your company be any different. A key role for you as the owner of your business is to set regularly scheduled meetings throughout the organization which will improve communication. This starts with having meetings with your business partner(s) and keeping them. Although it can be tempting to push back or skip a meeting due to some current “fire” in the business, it is imperative that you put your meetings into your appointment book with pen, not pencil. Treat it like a meeting with your top customer.
3. Do What You Say You’re Going To Do: if you tell your partner that you’re going to do something, then make sure it gets done. There’s no quicker way to erode trust than to continually promise that something will get done and then continuing to fail to deliver. The quickest way to lose a customer is to overpromise and underdeliver. Don’t do it with your business partner(s).
4. If You Feel It, Say It: I heard this quote from sales trainer David Sandler, and it made so much sense to me that it has stuck with me. If you can’t be open and honest with your partner, then what are you doing in a partnership with that person? If there is a perceived slight or if something is unclear or if you’re frustrated, simply say it! Don’t let it fester like an open sore which will only grow worse over time if it continues to be ignored. You’re not a mind reader and neither is your partner.

Chances are, if you and your partner(s) are not communicating well, then there are probably some big communication gaps within the rest of your organization as well. Just like in a family, if the relationship with the mother and father is not strong, it’s difficult for the rest of the family unit to be strong.

Understanding and following the four steps outlined above will go a long way to ensuring the strength of the relationship with you and your partner(s).

Do you ever stop practicing? My wife and I were talking earlier tonight about this parenting class we took a little over 3 months ago. We both really enjoyed the class and got a lot out of it.

The course was called Love and Logic and our instructor was a former grade school teacher and counselor named Ron Chidsey. He reminded us how important it was for us to come to the class because, not only did we get the chance to discuss our experiences over the past week, but it was important for us to do something every week to get better.

Well, it turns out that my wife and I haven’t been doing as well as we’d like. We both expressed some frustration about how quickly we’ll snap at the kids to get them re-focused. A big part of the Love and Logic approach has to do with reducing the stress level for everyone.

This got me to thinking about how hard it is to form new habits. You really have to stick with it for a long time. And it’s not like you’re ever really done.

For instance, two groups I meet with every week are my BNI group and my Rotary Club. It’s good to meet every week because it keeps me going. Keeps me practicing. Keeps me sharp. And we all get more done because of it. If we met every other week or once a month, the groups would not be nearly as effective.

That’s probably a big reason why we set our coaching practice up to be weekly meetings for the majority of our clients. Forming new habits is tough, even when it’s your business or your kids. Repetition and getting into a new routine are key when trying to form new behaviors.

Just because I’ve been to this parenting class doesn’t mean I can do everything they talked about and taught us. I haven’t had enough time to practice it yet. But I certainly found a handful of things I use all the time. So I definitely got something out of it long-term.

My favorite takeaway is the concept of giving your children choices, both of which are acceptable outcomes for you as the parent. The better our children get at making choices, the better they’ll be when they’re out in the real world by themselves. Because they’ll be thinking about the consequences of their choices.

Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we all lived that way? If we all focused on making good choices and accepted the consequences of our choices, even when they aren’t so favorable. How much better would that make your business?

So here are a couple of ways to stay on top of your game:

1. Do It Every Week: take a look at some of the top athletes. They rarely take more than a week off at a time from practicing their craft. Everyone from Tiger Woods to LeBron James to Peyton Manning. They know that to stay sharp, they have to practice all the time. What makes you think you’re any different in your chosen profession or business?
2. Find Someone To Do It With: make sure you partner up. This is true whether you’re trying to start or stay on a workout routine or trying to make changes in your business and your behavior. I can’t stress enough how far our business coaching business has come because Jack and I have each other to keep things moving forward. Most of the coaches we see are single practice folks who have a hard time creating a sustainable business model. We see it with our clients until we can get them into a rhythm where they make that time each week to work on the “strategery” of their business.
3. Commit To It: if you don’t commit to it with your entire heart and soul, the changes you make won’t be sustainable. It’s like that old saying of “use it or lose it,” if you aren’t committed to reaching your goal (e.g staying on top of your game and the competition) then you won’t work at it enough to keep improving.

Those are just a few thoughts for how you can stay on top of your game in both good times and bad. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to stay on top of your game.

The Profit Plan is the answer to how to make money in your business. If you can’t plan it out on paper, chances are you won’t be able to do it in real time with your hectic business.

Both Jack and I have quite a bit of experience with helping companies that are struggling to make money turn themselves into profitable organizations. Each time, a Profit Plan has been a key component.

What is a Profit Plan? Well it’s routinely called a Budget or Forecast by most people. It’s a financial projection of your revenue and expenses for the next 12 months. We call it a Profit Plan, because once you subtract all of your expenses from your revenue you should have a profit left over. If not, you need to figure out a way to either increase your sales or reduce your expenses.

What’s nice about a profit plan, is that it not only covers the numbers portion of the projection, but also the underlying assumptions. For each line item under revenue and expenses, you should have a written assumption that explains how you’ve arrived at that figure.

Pulling together a Profit Plan does a couple of great things for an organization:

1. It Pulls Everyone Together: chances are, you as the owner cannot put together a full profit plan without input from some of your people. You’ll need to have discussions with each of the key people in your organization to pull it all together. It gets all the key players in your organization focused on the future which is where you can make changes and have an impact.
2. It Allows For Ownership: everyone in your organization can be assigned responsibility for one or several lines in the Profit Plan. For instance, you can nominate someone as the Utility Czar for your organization and her job is to make sure that your Utility expenses meet or beat the projected figure.
3. It Prevents Monday Morning Quarterbacks: that’s the phrase used when people analyze football games the day after and second guess decisions made during the heat of battle. Usually it’s someone on the outside of the organization who plays this role. If you have all the key people on your team involved in the planning process, they have to each sign off on the plan. The fact that things are written down prevents them from going back and rewriting history.

The first year is always the hardest because you’ll be starting from scratch. Each successive year gets easier because you can now build on prior year’s experiences.

I recently came across the following passage from Napoleon Hill. It provides some terrific insight into why change is important. The article also addresses how those situations which can often appear to be a negative actually turn out to be a positive because they force you to change your habits and allow you to discover new things.

The Importance of Change
by Napoleon Hill

Excerpt on the importance of change from You Can Work Your Own Miracles
by Napoleon Hill

Of the utmost significance is the fact that the Creator provided man with the one and only means by which he has broken away from the animal family and ascended into spiritual estates, where he may be the master of his own earthly fate. The means thus provided is the law of change. By the simple process of changing his mental attitude, man can draw for himself any pattern of life and living he chooses and make that pattern a reality. This is the one and only thing over which man has been provided with irrevocable, unchallenged, and unchallengeable powers of absolute control – a fact which suggests that it must have been considered by the Creator to be the most important prerogative of man.

Dictators and would-be world conquerors come and they go. They always go because it is not a part of the overall plan of the universe for man to be enslaved. It is rather a part of the eternal pattern that every man shall be free, to live his own life his own way, to control his thoughts and his deeds, to make his own earthly destiny.

That is why the philosopher, who looks backward into the past to determine what is going to happen in the yet unborn future, cannot get excited because a Hitler or a Stalin momentarily basks in the light of his own ego and threatens the freedom of mankind. For these men, like all others of their ilk who have preceded them, will destroy themselves with their own excesses and vanities and their lusts for power over the free world. Moreover, these would-be stranglers of human freedom may be only demons who unwittingly serve as shock troops to awaken man from his complacency and make way for the change that will bring new and better ways of living.

Nature leads man through change after change by peaceful means as long as man cooperates, but she resorts to revolutionary methods if man rebels and neglects or refuses to conform to the law of change. The revolutionary method may consist of the death of a loved one or a severe illness; it may bring a failure in business, or the loss of a job, which forces the individual to change his occupation and seek employment in an entirely new field, where he will find greater opportunities which he would never have known if his old habits had not been broken up.

Nature enforces the law of fixation of habits in every living thing lower than man, and just as definitely enforces the law of change in the habits of man. Nature thus provides the only means by which man may grow and evolve in accordance with his fixed position in the overall plan of the universe.

Thomas A. Edison’s first major adversity was experienced when his teacher sent him home after only three months in a graded school, with a note to his parents saying he did not have the capacity to take an education. He never went back to school – a conventional school, that is – but he began to school himself in the great University of Hard Knocks, where he gained an education which made him one of the greatest inventors of all times. Before he was graduated from that university he was fired from one joy after another, while the hand of Destiny guided him through the essential changes which prepared him to become a great inventor. A formal schooling perhaps would have spoiled his chances of becoming great.

Nature knows what she is about when adversity, physical pain, sorrow, distress, failure and temporary defeat overtake one. Remember this and profit by it the next time you meet with adversity. And instead of crying out in rebellion, or shivering with fear, hold your head high and look in all directions for that seed of an equivalent benefit which is carried in every circumstance of adversity.

Source: You Can Work Your Own Miracles. Napoleon Hill.
Fawcett Columbine, New York. Pgs. 33 & 34.

You know the great thing about reading? It allows you to escape the present. It brings you back to another time in history. Or perhaps to a possible future.

Movies have the same effect. I know we all have our favorite movies that we watch over and over. Usually it’s because of how those movies make us feel.

I seem to go through fits and starts in my life. Reading is that way for me. At least reading books that is. I recently started reading a new book for the first time in about 6 months. It’s one I’ve had on my personal “to read” list for several years.

It’s Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. What I particularly like about this book (and I’m only on about page 450 out of over 1,000!) is that it was originally published in 1957 and it was set in the near future. So it has the ability to bring you back but also have you look forward to a potential future.

One thing that is very striking in the book is that it is set in tough economic times and there is a watering down of capitalism. The railroads are colluding to stop competition. Progress has slowed to nearly a grinding halt. Most steel and manufacturing plants are struggling or shut down. The oil companies are thriving. Business leaders are talking about doing what’s right for society as a whole as their top mission.

I think I’ll use some of the characters from Atlas Shrugged to highlight points in the future. Ms. Rand does a fantastic job of developing what appear on the surface to be very extreme characters. Underneath though, they’re all deep, human, and vulnerable. The book covers many different areas of business and life, from leadership to customer service to the shear grind it takes to be successful at something you love.

Another thing. It’s the first non-business book I’ve read in probably 10 years. I think I’m going to make it a habit to alternate my books. One business and then some non-business related novel or book. It seems good to keep the brain fresh that way. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

If you do just a handful of things right as a leader, you’re going to have tremendous success when it comes to motivating your employees. Here’s what I keep in mind along with an example of what I’m working on with my Rotary Club in my role as President this year:

1. Keep Goals Simple & Laser Focused: your most important role as the leader of your organization is to set out the goals for the year. The simpler and more focused the better. A handful each year at most are enough. Anything more is too overwhelming. In Rotary, I have three goals for our club this year: i)kangaroos, ii) 50, and iii)26,000. One of the interesting things about kangaroos is they can only move forward. I want our members to continue to move forward and not relive the past so much. 50 is our goal for number of total members by the end of my term. And 26,000 is the number of children under the age of 5 who die each day (that’s right, it’s every DAY, not week, month or year) from preventable causes. We’d like to make a significant dent in that number.
2. Consistently Communicate: you have to remind people of the goals frequently. Don’t assume that because you told them once that they’ll remember. A good guide is to remind people at least once a month why we’re here and what we’re trying to do. In Rotary, our members are reminded about our three goals this year at least once a month at our Business Meeting.
3. Lead By Example: it’s important for you as the leader to lead by doing, not just telling. If all you do is bark out orders and expect people to obey, then you’ll never be “part of the team.” It’s a lot more difficult to lead the team if you aren’t a member. In Rotary, I make sure I participate in as many activities as I can and not just the ones I like or am particularly good at. What’s great is that if you keep your eye on the goal, even the tasks you don’t like aren’t so bad! On top of that, you continue to grow as you stretch yourself out of your comfort areas and you will discover new skills. You want your team to do the same.
4. Find the Energy: your job as the leader isn’t to lay out all the projects or steps to achieve your goals. That’s why you have people in an organization. Instead, your role it to support those projects that help advance your goals, no matter where the idea comes from. If you support projects that your people like, as long as they fit into your framework of a laser focus, then chances are you’ll reach your goals much faster and with less wasted effort. You’ll also have very motivated people because they’ll be working on projects that they’ve introduced. In Rotary, I’m supporting all projects that help further our three goals for this year and we’re making tremendous progress on each as a result. And I really haven’t thought of any of the projects! I just laid out the goals.

Just think about it for a second. If you have to think of everything from the goals of the organization to each individual step along the way to achieve the goals, what good are your people? Chances are they’ll start to ask themselves that very question and when they realize they aren’t good for your organization, they’ll leave.

If you’re constantly laying out the steps to achieve the goals, you’ll be spending a lot of your time to motivate your team to do the things you want them to do vs. enable and assist them to do the things they want to do. Your job as a leader is to serve your people so they can do what they love to do. Not so they can do what you want them to do, which for too many business owners is to make the business owner a lot of money! Who the heck wants to do that?

Unless, of course, I’m making about as much or more than anyone else doing what I do, and I love what I do. If those two things were true, why would anyone leave your organization unless it was totally out of their control (e.g. physical move, family conflict)? And you can’t truly “love what you do” if you’re being told all the time what to do. So that just about covers motivating your people, doesn’t it?

Again, think about it for a few seconds. Think about one of your favorite things to do. It may be reading a certain type of book. Or working in your garden or in your wood shop. Maybe playing basketball or fooling around with the latest technology gadget. Whatever it is, my point is that you’re going to put forth your best effort to do it. So that takes care of “motivation.”

Once you, as a leader, understand and accept that YOU CANNOT MOTIVATE ANYONE, then you’ll start to have more motivated people in your organization. Now what you’ll be focused on instead is making sure your people are doing what they want to do to help your organization achieve the goals you’ve laid out!

Many of us often unnecessarily complicate things. Especially when it comes to something as magical as marketing. Here are three words to market your business:

Who

Why

How

Those three words should guide all of your marketing activities.

Who am I trying to reach? Who is my market? Who will buy my stuff? Who has been buying my stuff?

Tell me a little about that customer of yours. Is your customer an individual or a business? Is your customer someone from your neighborhood or from halfway around this relatively flat world of ours? What’s her income? What industries are they in?

Why have your customers purchased your products and/or services? Why do they continue to buy? Why have some stopped buying?

Different messages will resonate with different target markets. What message do I communicate? What will get their attention? What pains can I solve? What resonates with them? What words do they use to describe my product or service? It’s easy for your message to get confused or muddled on it’s way to your audience.

How am I going to reach my customer? How do I know what to track? How do I know what advertising or marketing strategy works the best? How do I know which marketing dollars to spend and which ones to redeploy? How can I connect with my customers (especially the ones who don’t know I exist yet!)?

There are so many different marketing strategies to choose from. Fortunately they fall into three broad categories: i) short-term, ii) long-term, and iii) passive. It’s important for your company to be doing at least one of these strategies at all times.

The best place to invest both your time and money is where you’ve had positive results in the past. If you track how each customer comes into your business, then you’ll know which marketing dollars you are investing provide the greatest return. (If you would like a summary of all the ways you can contact your customers and potential customers all on 1 page, shoot me an email at adams@maximumvp.com.)

If you use these three simple words to guide your marketing plan for 2009 and beyond, I know you’ll have a much clearer picture of what you’re trying to accomplish and it should lead to better overall results!

You’ve seen condemned houses right? I mean, it’s not a pretty sight. Holes where there aren’t supposed to be holes. Boards where there are supposed to be windows. All sorts of things could be or are going on in there that aren’t good. Shouldn’t these condemned houses just be torn down?

So what’s the difference between that scenario and what’s going on with many of our industries, particularly here in the U.S. Can you tell me it’s hard to see the similarities between the condemned houses and industries such as the U.S. auto industry.

Now don’t hear me wrong, I’m not saying that we should shoot the auto industry dead. What I am saying is that instead of throwing good money into a condemned situation, why not close up the Big 3 for a little while and rebuild them. Put that money into the workers’ pockets and not into producing more cars that the market doesn’t want or need right now. Much like someone who rebuilds in neighborhoods where blighted houses have finally been torn down, the auto industry can be rebuilt from the ground up.

It’s not like there aren’t enough cars in the U.S. right now for people to get around. Heaven forbid if we’d actually have to carpool or take public transportation and actually get to know our neighbors again by interacting with other people. Instead of simply climbing from one controlled environment (our house) to another (our car) to another (our workplace) and then back into our car and back home.

This would also help the many small businesses that have replacement parts for vehicles or could start supplying that aftermarket vs. supplying parts for newly built cars only. There are also many local auto shops that are going out of business because people either don’t have work done on their cars because the car is leased and they’ll just get a new one in a couple of years or they go to their dealers to get work done.

Picture the auto industry being built back up and rising to the top of the worldwide auto industry in 20 years. Can anyone really see that happening now with the current state of the Big 3?

Not to just look at the bigger companies, there are many smaller companies that are on a going out of business curve, and probably have been for years. But, much like your auto company brethren, you didn’t adjust your business to meet the market’s needs. Instead you blamed it on “tough competition” or on “China” or “unions” or something else when you should have been reinventing your business.

The beauty of changing your business model is that it’s never too late. If you’re already at the point where you’re losing money in your business and you’re having to personally fund the losses, then why not invest those funds into a new venture that has a future instead of one that only has a past?

It’s hard to do. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do without some outside help. You and anyone who works for you is too emotionally involved in the business to be objective and ask the right questions. Besides, you’ve been thinking the same way for a while now, and most likely so has everyone else.

So how do you get some outside help? Here are a few things to consider:

1. Visit Your Local Library: you’d be amazed how many books have been written about “just your unique situation.” I know, you’re different, but what do you have to lose? Worst case you get to tell me that you were right and no one has a situation like you. Best case, you may actually get some ideas you can use.
2. Attend Seminars/Workshops: with so many “experts” floating around, it’s pretty easy these days to find some local seminars or workshops. Just take a look around your local Chamber of Commerce (click here for a link to find your local Chamber) which is bound to have some sort of breakfast, brown bag lunch or after-hours event that has some continuing education incorporated. Look for some local entrepreneur groups. Heck, even try your local civic organization (e.g. Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions, etc.), where you’ll meet some successful business owners who might be able to provide some guidance.
3. Join a Mastermind Group: you may have also heard these groups called Brainstorming groups or something similar. This is basically a group of like minded people (e.g. other small business owners) who meet on a regular basis to discuss opportunities and challenges in their chosen field. So for business owners, this is a group that should be focused on getting you out of the state of how. You know, “how do I pay all my bills”, “how do I find better people”, “how do I increase my profit (or perhaps even how do I make a profit)”, “how do I continue to make the business succeed when my partnership has failed”, “how do I get my daughter or son to want to take the reins of the business (or better yet, how do I enable him/her to take the reins)”? And the list of “hows” goes on and on. You’d be amazed at what solutions present themselves when you work through your challenges and opportunities with a group of your peers. We call our Mastermind groups “The Table”.
4. Hire a Business Coach: some people just want to cut to the chase and go straight for hiring someone to help them through a situation. Many of these folks will engage a business coach. How do you find one? Well, like most things when it comes to a trusted service, whether it be a plumber, doctor, handyman, or attorney, you should start by asking your friends and business associates if they know of any good business coaches. You can also ask some of the groups listed in #2 above if they would recommend anyone. Here’s a quick tip: make sure you take the President aside and ask for her/his “off the record” recommendation if there are several business coaches in their particular group. You can also try searching on the web. Start with groups like BNI (Business Networking International) in your area which are “tip” or “referral” groups where many of the better business coaches reside. Look on the web site for a business coach training organization like the PBCA (Professional Business Coaches Alliance). You can also perform a search for coaches in your local area. Simply search for “Your City” and the phrase “business coach” or “business coaching”.

So, do I have your attention yet? It’s OK to ask for and get some outside help if you’re going to try to reinvent yourself. I mean some of the smartest business people in the world (the ones running Fortune 500 companies) need the help of anyone and everyone in the U.S. from either the private or public sector. What makes you think you can do it alone?